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This year’s IPL auction has not only surprised everyone but it has also shown everyone how the things tend to change when big money is at stake.

I wonder what will happen if these people do not take the maestro Sachin Tendulkar in the next auction! People will eventually lose interest in the game. One of the most important reasons for watching IPL was that the short form of the game gave an opportunity to the older players, who have bid farewell to the game, and for people like us a chance to watch our favorite players on the field.

And now that chance is gone! I am a little apprehensive that the IPL will lose it’s fame in the coming years. I am reminded of the Orwellian philosophy that anything that starts with a good spirit ends up in the greed of somebody.

Here’s a list of some of the best quotes I’ve come across in Gregory David Roberts’ “Shantaram”. I liked these lines very much and hence I’m trying to make a collection here so that I can refer to them whenever I want to. 🙂

Sometimes even with the purest intentions, we make things worse when we do our best to make things better – Lin

It is the mark of the age in which we live that the style becomes the attitude, instead of the attitude becoming the style – Didier

That is how they manage to live together, a billion of them, in reasonable peace. They are not perfect, of course. They know how to fight and lie and cheat each other, and all the things that all of us do. But more than any other people in the world, the Indians know how to love one another – Didier

It’s a fact of life on the run that you often love more people than you trust. For people in the safe world, of course, exactly the opposite is true – Lin

If fate doesn’t make you laugh, then you just don’t get the joke – Karla (one of my all time favorite quotes 😉 )

The worst thing about corruption as a system of governance is that it works so well – Didier

There is no act of faith more beautiful than the generosity of the very poor – Abdullah

Sometimes the lion must roar, just to remind the horse of his fear – Abdullah

There is no believing in God. We either know God, or we don’t – Khader Bhai

People do not understand the truly fantastic effort required in the corruption of a simple man. And the more simple the man, the more the effort it requires – Didier

News tells you what people did. Gossip tells you how much they enjoyed it – Didier

Only a wicked man can derive benefits from good works. A good man, on the other hand, would simply be worn out and bad tempered – Didier

When we act, even with the best of our intentions, when we interfere with the world, we always risk a new disaster that mightn’t be our making, but that wouldn’t occur without our action – Lin

Some of the worst wrongs were caused by people who tried to change things – Karla

Fear and guilt are the dark angels that haunt rich men – Khader Bhai

Despair and humiliation haunt the poor – Lin

Trouble is the only property that poor people are allowed to own – Johnny Cigar

Love seldom concerns itself with what we know or with what’s true – Lin

The world is run by one million evil men, ten million stupid men, and a hundred million cowards – Abdul Ghani (how true!)

Nations neglect no men more shamefully than the heroes of their wars – Abdul Ghani

You are not a man until you give your love, truly and freely, to a child. And you are not a good man until you earn love, truly and freely, of a child in return – Khader Bhai

Optimism is the first cousin of love, and it’s exactly like love in 3 ways: it’s pushy, it has no real sense of humor, and it turns up where you least expect it – Lin

The sane man is simply a better liar than the insane man – Khader Bhai

Fate has every power over us, but two. Fate cannot control our free will and fate cannot control lie. Men lie, to themselves more than to others, and others more often than they tell the truth. But fate doesn’t lie – Khader Bhai

The truth is found more often in music, than it is in books of philosophy – Khader Bhai

Good doctors have at least three things in common: they know how to observe, they know how to listen and they are very tired – Lin

Suffering is the way we test our love, especially for God – Khader Bhai

Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that’s all there is: love and it’s duty, sorrow and it’s truth, In the end that’s all we have – Lin

Friendship is also a kind of medicine, and the markets for it too are sometimes black – Lin

There is no reason good enough to make us fight with each other – Qasim Ali

Justice is a judgment that is both fair and forgiving. Justice is not done until everyone is satisfied, even those who offend us and must be punished by us. Justice is not the only way we punish those who do wrong. It is the way we try to save them – Qasim Ali

Poverty and pride are devoted blood brothers until one, always and inevitably, kills the other – Lin

Nothing grieves more deeply or pathetically than one half of a great love that isn’t meant to be – Didier

One of the ironies of courage, and the reason why we prize it so highly, is that we find it easier to be brave for someone else than we do for ourselves alone- Lin

There’s no meanness too spiteful or too cruel when we hate someone foe all the wrong reasons – Didier

Any Indian man will tell you that although love might not have invented in India, it was certainly perfected there.

We usually do, something worse than we can imagine is stalking us, and set to pounce. Fate’s way of beating us in a fair fight is to give us warnings that we hear, but never heed

Mistakes are like bad loves, the more you learn from them, the more you wished they’d never happened – Karla

Silence is the tortured man’s revenge – Lin

Prisons are the temples where devils learn to pray – Lin

In prisons, a man rations his smiles because predatory men see smiling as a weakness, weak men see it as an invitation, and prison guards see it as a provocation to some new torment – Lin

Every virtuous act has some dark secret in its heart and every risk that we take contains a mystery that can’t be solved – Khader Bhai

The only victory that counts in prison, is survival – Lin

Guilt is the hilt of the knife that we use on ourselves, and love is often the blade; but its worry that keeps the knife sharp, and worry that gets most of us, in the end – Lin

You can never tell how much badness is in a man until you see him smile (a very nice thought, indeed)

Despotism despises nothing so much as righteousness in its victims – Lin

If you turn your heart as a weapon, you always end up using it on yourself – Lin

Gold fires the eyes with a different kind and color of greed. Money’s almost always just a means to an end; but, for many men, gold is an end in itself, and their love for it is the kind that can give love a bad name – Lin

Happiness is a myth. It was invented to make us buy things – Karla

Redemption’s climb is steepest if the good we did is soiled with secret shame

The effect, no matter how skilfully achieved, is always born in the artist’s intuition. And intuition can’t be taught.

We can deny the past, but we can’t escape the torment. The past is a speaking shadow that keeps pace with the truth of what we are, step for step, until we die – Lin

It’s okay if we all learned what we should all learn, the first time round, we wouldn’t need love at all – Karla

Pity is the one part of love that asks for nothing in return and because of that, every act of pity is an act of prayer – Lin

Black money runs through the finger faster than the legal, hard-earned money. If we can’t respect the way we earn it, money has no value. If we can’t use it ti make life better for our families and loved ones, money has no purpose – Lin (again one of my fav quotes 🙂 )

I think wisdom is over-rated. Wisdom is just cleverness with all the guts kicked out of it. I’d rather be clever than wise, any day – Didier

There’s a kind of luck that’s much more than being in the right place at the right time, a kind of inspiration that’s not much more that doing the right thing in the right way, and both only happen when you empty your heart of ambition, purpose and plan; when you give yourself, completely, to the golden, fate-filled moment.

The soul has no culture. The soul has no nations. The soul has no color or accent or way of life. The soul is forever. The soul is one. And when the heart has it’s moment of truth and sorrow, the soul can’t be stilled.

One of the reasons why we crave love, and seek for it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and sorrow.

The only force more ruthless and cynical than the business of big politics is the politics of big business – Didier.

These are some of the quotes that I have jotted down in my quote book while reading the book. However, there a few more quotes that I’ve highlighted in the book itself and I’d be writing them soon. Do comment if you like any of these quotes or come up with your own list of quotes from your fav book.

PS: I’ll be writing a review on Shantaram soon. It was an awesome read. And I urge everyone reading this post to read the book as well.

I was eating paani-puri at a local thela when suddenly I got a call from an unknown number. I put down the saucer and attended the call. A strange voice asked me to come down to the police station as I had skipped a traffic signal in the city and I carried no license. I was shocked, how could someone call me for skipping a traffic signal? Everybody in the town does that. And even if they have noted down the vehicle number in the dim light of the night, the registration details drawn out of the database would clearly indicate my father’s mobile number and not mine. Then how in Devil’s name did someone get my number? And how did he know that I wasn’t carrying a license? I was completely at shock and started to apologize without even knowing whom I was speaking to. Then all of a sudden I heard a boisterous laugh burst out from the caller’s side. Somebody was making a fool our of me. I couldn’t recognize the voice. Later he confessed who he was and I laughed out with such an extreme joy that even the paani-poori guy was taken aback with my excitement.

It was an old friend of mine who was playing a prank on me. We’d studied in the same school till 10th standard. He asked me to come down to Delhiwala Sweet shop. It’s not a hangout place as such, but it is an important landmark in the city and everyone knows about it. I went to the shop to see what was he looking like, coz I hadn’t seen him in like 8 years. There he was, along with 2 more guys from my class. As soon as I approached the venue, they all started to make funny faces to tease me regarding that phone call. After a while, I too gave in and that short coincident get together turned out to be a memorable one as the school time scandals of Javed and Khalid started to unleash. I had almost forgotten everyone after going out of the school as I had other big plans in my mind and as there were no means of communication in those days to be in contact with the old guys. I’d lost all my contacts with school friends and now I truly regret that.

Those were some really sweet memories. We kept chatting for an hour or so about the whereabouts of other friends and then came the hottest topic of the day. It was about our Physics teacher.

Almost every one from my class had a teenage crush on her. Everyone tried their best to impress her in the class. Some of them by wishing her Good Mornings and Good Evenings every now and then and some others by staring at her continuously without blinking their eyes off. I, on the other hand, tried some sober techniques. I tried to get good grades in her subject; told her about the latest achievements and discoveries in physics; and pointed out her mistakes, at times, to make her know what kind of a perfection-lover guy I was. But none of them worked out. Alas! However, as I see it now, at least I made a nice attempt and I’m sure she loved me for my honesty and my dedication towards understanding physics as a young student and for my effort in the exams to stand out at the top of the class. But then one day we came to know that she was engaged to a NRI guy and was about to get married. Anarchy prevailed in the class and all the students were upset. After all, it was their first pseudo-break-up :P. Their first crush was getting married to a bloody NRI. There were even fights among some group of students who thought that thinking about the teacher was their own prerogative.

I mean, can you believe that? I had no notion about that but that little get together unveiled these facts and I couldn’t but resist myself from being awed at listening to these scandals.

A friend in that group maintains a database of all the scandals that had happened during and after the school time and starts narrating them whenever there is a company to hear to him. As usual, he started narrating the sexy school time scandals and my memory kept going back to those adolescent school days when I didn’t know what made women different from men, why is there an attraction between these two sexes and what drives the impulse to such an attraction. That was the time when I had no idea what I was going to do with my life; no idea how to talk to the opposite sex(as I had studied in a boys school); and no idea, whatsoever, of what porn was.

Well that’s how I was, and I guess that’s how everyone at that age were like. But later on we have developed and we came to know of all these things and we too, like others, were thrown into the web of conscience to find our own way. And the happiness in being ignorant had lost; the happiness in being shy towards the opposite sex had vanished; the happiness in being adolescent had disappeared.

No matter how much I think about being adolescent again, I’d never have such an opportunity again. But given a chance, I’d definitely like to go sit in those classrooms with all those idiot friends of mine and attend the class of my physics teacher.

At the end of our conversation, I could see a happiness in everyone’s smiles but I could even see the numbness in their eyes. A numbness created by the nostalgia and a strong craving to re-attend the school. We promised each other to keep in touch and to organize a get together of the whole batch soon. After giving a tight hug, we parted our ways. 🙂

You too might have had an interesting time in your adolescent days, if so, do write a post of your own adolescent days and paste your link in the comments!

Back in 10th class, I had developed a very deep interest in Mathematics and an inner intuition told me that I should choose the science stream over the medical and commerce streams.

The +2 years were the most enjoyable days of my life. My love for Mathematics just kept on increasing and I loved solving math problems than anything else in the study hours. I was also intrigued by the concepts of physics and how every small thing built around me was but an application of physics guided by the language of mathematics. I must admit here that I sucked at Chemistry. Though I loved a few chapters which were related to mathematics, in some way or the other, like “Solutions”, I hated Organic as well as Inorganic Chemistry since I’m very poor at memorizing the properties of crappy elements and their crappy reactions at crappy temperatures. I attempted AIEEE, IIT-JEE and not-to-mention explicitly, EAMCET. JEE didn’t prove out to be successful for me but I secured a very good rank in AIEEE.

Having scored AIR 1404 in AIEEE, I had two options in front of me: to spend 1 year by taking long-term in order to enter into IITs, or to join in some reputed college listed under AIEEE. I chose the latter option since I always wanted to learn new things rather than repeating the same things again and again. And thus, I decided to go to a college. At the time of joining, everybody told me that the college I had opted for has earned a lot of reputation in a very less time and that I was quite lucky to have secured a seat in an institution as prestigious as this one. I was more than flattered and I joined the college without any hesitation. This was the point of time when I had no idea what my future would be like, whether I’d get the kind of education I was looking for or whether I’d be running a rat race. But since I had made a decision, I couldn’t look back.

The very first lecture in the college made it absolutely clear that all my prior knowledge of maths and physics will have no or least application in what I was going to do in the following years to come. A few courses here and there in mathematics kept my passion for maths alive and burning. But Physics, it was gone. Completely! Phut!

Though, in the first semester we had a few classes on mechanics and other engineering applications of physics, they were not of any use to us in the years that followed. Neither the professor, nor the student raised any doubt in the class as the complex equations involving double derivatives of vectors on a complex plane were far beyond the comprehension of either of them. And if any student dared to raise a doubt in the class, the prof scorned at him/her by saying that how could one come to a prestigious institution like this without having the knowledge of such a simple subject! Simple? My ass.

Anyways, in the second semester we were taught Elementary Electronics along with the students of Electronics stream. It was an elementary course and was designed only to introduce us to a few terms which we were supposed to be conversant of. Since the course dealt with electronics and semi conductors (Physics) I was very much fascinated by its content. At one time I had seriously thought of changing the stream to Electronics. But everybody knew that ECE was a very tough stream and most of the students even sympathized with their ECE friends for having a tough time. So I consulted a few of my friends to seek their advice on finalizing my decision. Every one of them strongly condemned my idea, they even said that I was nuts and only a crack would opt Electronics. In those days, I didn’t have guts to go against the words of my friends and so I decided to stay put and run the rat race.

Year after year, I saw my grade sheet being filled up with unwanted courses and demoralizing grades. Every bad grade discouraged me, decreased my morale, forced me to think from a CGPA point of view, which in turn forced me to think from placements point of view. I was demoralized to such an extent that I started hating exams, professors and especially books. I was forced into a rebellion of giving up on the grades and involving myself in other extra-curricular activities. I knew that I was intelligent enough to pass any exam with one night stand but that would only convince my inner soul that I’d passed an examination, and not that I’d excelled at it. Believe me, wearing an I-don’t-really-care-about-grades smile on the face is really a difficult thing especially when a small bug inside your brain is aware of the consequences of your grades and their effect on your placements.

Every year, I used to subscribe to those courses which, according to the masses, were relatively easy and susceptible enough to fetch me a good grade. Such courses were very popular among the students because the end semester question paper, which comprised 60% of the total grade, would never alter. So, if one obtains the end semester paper from any senior, one doesn’t have to study much. Knowing the answers to the questions was the only key to assure a good grade. I, on the other hand, looked upon every course with the intention of learning. I also tried to solve the problem using the conventional approach first and then by applying my knowledge of the course. I failed to write the correct answer, I failed to obtain good marks, I failed to get a good grade. Every time after coming out of the exam hall I had a lot of expectations from the result. But every time the marks disappointed me. I have seen my fellow batch mates arguing with the profs and TAs to increase at least 1 mark and in every problem and thus in the process getting their marks increased by two digit figures. I’m not saying that all of them belonged to that category; there were a few who were genuinely talented and would obtain decent marks without putting the effort of arguing with the profs. But I belonged to neither of the categories aforementioned.

In my fourth year, I took a bold decision of taking a tough course irrespective of everyones warnings. And the course was Game Theory. Traditionally, only the toppers and the rankers across the batches used to opt for that course. It was taught by the college dean who had warm feelings for toppers and rankers and he wouldn’t give a damn to the other students. I attended most of the classes sitting in the back bench making no noise. One fine day I was listening to the class with utmost attention when I noticed that the prof was struck at explaining some concept of game theory involving coordinate geometry. I knew the answer to that problem but the bad grades had such a bad effect on me that I thought everybody else too knew the answer; my futile attempt of answering it would rather go unnoticed and hence I kept silent. But when I saw that the toppers and the rankers were not able to solve it, I slowly opened my mouth and blurted out the answer. That was the first time the prof became aware of my presence. He did solve the problem but without appreciating my effort. But that day I learnt something. I learnt that the toppers and the rankers were the people who simply by-hearted the answers in order to gain maximum marks. They never saw a problem as a challenge. They’d never wanted to solve the problem, they only wanted to see the solutions and understand the procedure and write the same in exams.

Since very few students(22) opted for the course, our prof decided to abandon the examination and gave us all a big assignment instead. The assignment consisted of creating a completely new game which involved all the topics discussed in the class. I took this as an opportunity to prove it to the class that I still had the burning desire to create something different, novel and innovative. And I did come up with a game involving secondary mortgage market, bankers and debtors. My game depicted the beginning and evolution of the Sub-prime mortgage crisis. With appropriate utilities and players, I formulated the game in such an interesting manner that the prof was compelled to give me an “A” grade. Later, I learned that I was the only student in the class of 22 who secured an A grade. I was overwhelmed by this response. To me, this achievement was nothing less than winning an Academy Award.

My bold decision of taking a step against the crowd proved out to be a huge success for me. From that day onwards, I decided to make my own decisions without consulting any one. The best part of taking a decision of my own is that I don’t have to blame anybody for the consequences I face and I take the complete responsibility of my decision. 🙂

I was very skeptical about the meaning of Dabangg until I watched the movie today. “Dabangg” is the word for fearless and bold people who do not go by norms and make their own rules. Believe me, the movie was true to it’s name.

I watched the movie along with my parents at a local cinema hall and it was an incredible experience. I am not going the describe the plot or the line up of events of the film. So the post remains to be a non-spoiler alert. 🙂

Debutant director, Abhinav Singh Kashyap, has made a deliberate attempt at directing an ordinary script in an extraordinary way. The movie is a remarkable amalgamation of strong dialogues and powerful action sequences. The strength in the dialogues is marked by both the strong accent of North-Indian Hindi as well as Salman Khan’s buffoonery style of delivering them. The action sequences are good but they are a bit long and sometimes I felt like they were unnecessary. I cannot but help myself from saying that they were redundant, no matter how genuine they seemed to be. Apart from these, the movie is filled with some nice compositions including an item number, Munni Badnaam Hui.

Watching Dabangg in a cinema Hall was a completely different experience altogether. We were accompanied by a loud, noise-making audience that whistled and danced at every dialogue/song. As soon as the movie started, the local audience started complaining about closing the entry doors in their characteristic way. That was followed by Salman Khan’s entry which was received with a huge response. For some time, we were not even able to hear the words uttered by the actor. The audience went gaga for every little action that Salman performed on the screen. For every song, the audience cheered up, danced and created a lot of ruckus by throwing coins and currency notes. The energy in the crowd was so high that for a moment I felt as if I was in a rock show and Slash had appeared on the stage.

The fashion sense in my town is highly inspired by the Indian cinema. Everybody in the town today owns a pair of Ray-Ban glasses, just like the ones worn by Sallu. And even the style of keeping them on the backside of the collar has also been copied. I learned about that new style in the interval.

Second half of the movie did not meet my expectations. As the Munni song appears in the second half, the audience went absolutely crazy and started dancing in the balcony. There was a group of 15-20 boys who were dancing as if they were dancing with Munni herself.

Altogether Dabangg was a great watch. I enjoyed the movie thoroughly. There is more than one occasion in the film where I’d laughed my heart out. Salman Khan was outstanding in the movie. Sonakshi didn’t have a big role, but she has justified the character that she played. Arbaaz Khan was good, if not better. I was taken aback by looking at the body of Sonu Sood. His role, too, was good and he has carried it very prominently. Vinod Khanna and Dimple Kapadia were okayish. So there we go. A complete masala entertainer with a little heart and some stupid comedy. It’s a must watch movie to all those who have been working hard for quite some time now. The movie will definitely relieve you. I give a 3.5 stars for the movie and believe me out of those 3.5, 3.499 are for Salman only. 🙂

Generally, I don’t watch Saas Bahu TV soaps. But my cousins, they follow all the TV shows that air on Zee TV, Star Plus, Sony, Colors, Imagine and many other channels. Recently, when they visited my place, they asked me to put on their favorite channel, Zee, on TV. Without hesitation, I changed the channel.

I took my dinner plate and joined them to see what was cooking in the lives of the Parvatis and the Tulsis. It was some other serial, ostensibly similar to the rest of the saas bahu soaps. I was in no mood to watch them, but I couldn’t refuse to accompany them either. So I stayed. Well, I had nothing to do, so I started listening to those hackneyed phrases. And suddenly, I heard a very strong, yet cliched, dialogue:

And the background music turns to be a mixture of emotional, inspirational and revenge types. The cameraman shows the face expressions of all the members in a very slow motion. Bahu has an up turned eyebrow. Saas has an angry look and the husband has an expressionless face.

I was surfing for some documents in my cup-board when I came across this old diary of mine where I used to write all meaningless stories and other crap. I opened the diary to see what I used to write in my childhood days. The pages of the book have turned yellow, and I could smell a nice fragrance in the air carried by those yellow pages. I flipped the pages to find some of my childhood works. Here’s a story that I had written when I was in Fifth Grade:

Once upon a time, there lived a hunter. He was very brave and passionate about hunting. He wouldn’t give up on his prey, come whatever may. He was always prepared for any kind of attack.

One day he saw a small, cute cub in the forest. The cub was lost and was looking for it’s parents. Instead of helping the poor thing, the hunter goes after it and shoots it down. When he approaches the dead cub, he realizes that he is already in the territory of the tigers. He sees the whole tiger family moving towards him in grief and anger. There were more than 15 tigers ready to attack him. But the hunter was good enough to put all of them to death. He then rips off all the flesh out of those dead tigers and leaves their caricature in that forest. He takes all the flesh to his home, cooks it and tries to consume it. He could only consume a tenth of the whole thing. He throws away the rest of the flesh.

The following day he goes back to the forest and this time he kills the whole pack of deers. And then rabbits, and elephants and all other animals; day after day, everyday.

Then one day, he goes to the forest and sees that there were no animals left. He had destroyed many species for his devoted pleasure of hunting. But that doesn’t leave him satisfied. He’s still hungry and still as mad as he could get. He then sees a banana tree. He goes up and picks up all the bananas that he could see. He eats a few of them and throws away all the others, even the ripe ones which were not a full banana yet.

The next day he picks up all mangoes, and then oranges, and then apples; day after day, every day.

Then one day he sees that the forest is no longer useful to him. So he burns it down and moves towards another forest. He keeps moving from forest to forest burning down everything that is of no use to him.

Then one day he wakes up and sees that he was sleeping in the ashes, there was nothing left for him to eat. He roams around the place in search of food, but he couldn’t find anything to eat. He then regrets for what he had done. He concludes that his passion for hunting has taken a wild form and it has left him with nothing but pieces of burnt charcoal and dead hope. He then keeps wandering in the barren land that he had made out of a beautiful world and wishes that he could go back in time and set everything back to normal. But he couldn’t. He keeps wandering until his hunger takes control over his body and ceases it to death.

Moral of the story:

One should be passionate about whatever one does, but at the same time one should be wise enough to understand one’s responsibilities towards nature and other beings. Passion without wisdom is like a body without soul and wisdom without passion is like a book of meaningless words that don’t make any sense.

In the previous post, I had mentioned about my first endeavor with the Govt. Sector. I’d be continuing that story.

So, the next day I reached at the passport office at 5:00 in the morning after traveling for 23 kms from my place of residence. I was a little surprised to see 50 people in front of me even at that time. However, I was sure that this day I was going to get through the gate. And after standing in the line for the next 5 hours, finally I was sent inside the gate. The same line continued inside the office as well. The token guy gave tokens to some 40 odd people and then let us wait for the next 1 hour. It’s never easy to deal with these government servants. If you shout at them, they’ll throw you out of the gate; if you don’t shout, they’ll never do the work; and if you ask them politely, they’ll say they know what has to be done very well and I don’t no need to interrupt him/her.

Anyways, so after standing in the line for 5 hours to get inside the gate, add 1 more hour to get inside the office, finally I went into the office. There again, I had to wait for another 1 hour to get a chance to see the officer. Once the lady officer had confirmed the presence of all important documents and after checking my passport validity against her DB, she asked me to stand in another line to pay the money to another officer. Now, this another officer was a real bastard. All he had to do was: collect money from the people and stamp a few papers here and there. This guy was at the top of his voice, shouting at people to sit down and that he wouldn’t accept the money from people who were standing in the line. When I approached him, he refused to take the money from my hands and asked me to go to the end of the line. But the people behind me were supportive. They told him that I had been standing in the line with them for the past few hours and asking me to go back, at the very last moment, would be a disgraceful remark on their behalf towards my honesty. He finally accepted the money and thus the deal was sealed.

Long story short: In India, never, ever get the paperwork done by yourself. I stood in the line for 8 hours, and I wasn’t even sure that I was going to get the passport till the last minute. Wait, I’m still not sure whether my passport will arrive at my place of residence in the nest 30 days!

I have decided to name this post as a post on procrastination, as I had been postponing this thing for many days now. And finally, on July 14th, I had accomplished this task with a strongly determined heart but with some pain in the ass.